Character Prep: Emotional Arc

My next spec pilot is a drama with a female lead, a strong procedural element, and a strong personal element. The procedural part takes place in a world I'm not familiar with, so it'll require research. Writing the story outline, I could get hung up on the part of the story I don't know -- the procedural, or "business," as I think of it -- but instead I'm starting with something else: the emotional arc of the main character.

This is a more efficient approach for a couple of reasons. First, until I know the emotional arc of the character, I don't know what kind of story I'd be looking for in my research. Secondly, it's something I can develop on my own, so I don't risk getting sidetracked by the research and losing momentum.

When I know my main character's emotional arc, I can begin to build the plot. I'll know what I need the business to accomplish, even if I don't yet know the nuts and bolts of it. 

And again for the character, I don't want to get sidetracked pondering an extensive backstory. Instead, I start with this basic model:

The opening events of the show subvert her expectations by ____. This raises her biggest fear of ____. She could deal with her fear in a self-defeating way by ____, but instead she will ultimately draw on her greatest quality of ____ to take the path of fulfilling her own best destiny of ____.

This is the emotional arc I want to fill in. It provides me with the questions:

1. What's the problem she has to deal with?
2. What's her biggest fear and how does it relate to this problem?
3. What's her flaw and how will it lead her to take a self-defeating approach to the problem?
4. What's her greatest strength?
5. If she chooses the path of her strength instead of her flaw, what's the best destiny she can fulfill?

(If you want to write a tragedy or down-ending, you'd ask the 5th question in reverse: if she chooses the path of her flaw instead of her strength, what's the worst destiny she will encounter?)

My first set of answers to this question are kind of sweeping -- they might apply for an entire series. So I keep those and then modify them to make a simpler version that will fit in the pilot.

Then I have the foundation of my character's emotional story: she has a problem that triggers her greatest fear, and she first deals with it out of fear, exposing her biggest flaw. When the results of that attempt come to light, she takes a different tack, draws on her greatest strength, and fulfills her destiny.

There's an essential truth to this model that I find inspiring: every person has in them the potential to give into their worst impulses and fail, or live up to their best selves and achieve something great.

Consider an addict. Perhaps you have a friend or family member whose addiction is dragging them down, undermining them personally and in their careers. Because you love them, you can see that if they find the strength to quit, they have it in them to be so much greater than their addiction will let them be now. But to them, none of it is very clear, and powerful forces are holding them to a self-destructive path -- but you, outside of it and loving them, can see that they have a choice and a great destiny that will either be fulfilled or not.

That's the way I think of character arc. It was first illustrated for me by a wonderful novel by a friend, Andrew Kaufman, called All My Friends Are Superheroes. It's not an addiction story, though -- it's a love story in which the protagonist is clearly challenged to realise and overcome his own flaw or lose his love forever.

All of us have this choice between our best and worst impulses every day, but generally the stakes don't seem so high as overcoming addiction, or losing your greatest love. But as storytellers, we can show the choice very clearly by putting a character in high-stakes circumstances and following their emotional arc through to the end.